Here's a collection of vero (stripboard) and tagboard guitar and bass effect layouts that we have put together covering many classic and popular effects in growing numbers. Many of these have been posted on freestompboxes.org, so check that site out for great discussions on building your own effect pedals. Enjoy the builds and please also visit us on Facebook and Twitter

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Saturday, 19 January 2013

Allies Fuzz

Last one from Masaru Kubota's schematics: This fuzz kicks ass. I revamped Roger Mayer's Axis Fuzz and stuck on a phase stage to make the circuit sound like a tube amp. You probably notice the Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face biasing configuration. You can use a regular low-pass RC network, ala the ProCo Rat, to make the circuit sound like a "open" tube amp. This fuzz sounds ALOT like the "Modern Lead" amp model on my Zoom GM-200. You'll be surprised at how much this circuit sounds like a tube amp. The only thing "missing" is the desirable, fine-grain, underlying sheen, but who notices at a really loud rock show? The response feels really good. It even sounds really good with my horrible-sounding silverface CBS Fender Bassman (complete with aluminum trim and a mis-matched Fender cabinet loaded with P.A. speakers with whizzer cones). I hereby dedicate this schematic to not my father, my father was one of the Japanese-Americans in the American Internment Camps of World War II, but to Harry Meyer, my mother's first husband, who escaped from East Germany to become a representative of the BRD at the Hague in the Netherlands. For uniformity, all fixed resistors, except for the power supply resistor and of course the potentiometers, can be 100k resistors, to give a smoother response and for easier assembly.

A little thing worth noting; the schematic calls for 500 ohm pot for fuzz. As those are easily available, but no other design uses them, i sticked with 1K and placed 1K resistor in parallel with it. That makes the taper sort of an log, which might not give you the best feel for the control. So, use 1K pot as stated in the layout, or source some 500 ohm pots, use one of those and remove the 1K resistor between 1M and D1.

13 comments:

I've run into a brick wall with this one. I've had a look at the circuit on Kubota's website and it looks like there's a 100uf cap missing in parallel with the 10k resistor off the emitter of Q1, also the bottom cut doesn't have any connections to the right of it so I'm wondering if it's meant to be on a different line? Possibly between the bottom of the 1k resistor and the 100nf cap? Oh and the 100nf cap is labeled as 10nf on the circuit :D Sorry dude, I always seem to give you circuit headaches on a Saturday.

I'd pretty much tried the fixes you'd suggested above already but I think I've just managed to mess the board up even further by trying a few things. I'll try the new schem in the morning as I'm part way through another now (Ibanez Black Noise) and me and my girlfriend are off out soon. Thanks for the help dude.

Cool, I was only really building it to compare it to the Orion Fuzz as they're both derived from the same circuit. Thanks for sorting this, I'll redo it in the morning. The Black Noise is coming on nicely, I'd have finished it tonight but apparently I have to go out and get drunk :D

A number of people have asked me to do a build guide for one of these effects, but I noticed the other day that one of the guys here (timmy)...

Note

Not all these layouts are verified and some are put together from unverified schematics. So if you have good luck, or bad luck for that matter, then please let me know by dropping a comment in the topic. Thanks.

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